You can swear all you want in this state. Of course, the fact that swearing is free speech, protected under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment (“Congress, those #@*^!?>%, shall make no &*{}?!@ law restricting the rights of %+#@!?* law-abiding citizens to tell it exactly what they #%&()*!?+ think of it”), doesn’t stop some people from trying to stop others from exercising their right to spout off.

Unless you’re a hardcore baseball fan, Sunday, July 31, was probably just another day in your wretched excuse for a life. Maybe you mowed the lawn. Took the kids to the beach. Tried to help Congress solve the debt-ceiling problem.

David Geary must be crying in his beer.

Alan Pugsley must be inconsolable.

Rob Tod must have that deer-in-the-headlights look that precedes disaster.

That’s because Geary, Pugsley, and Tod, three of Maine’s best brewers, have been beaten soundly in a beer-tasting competition.

By Budweiser.

I suspect my neighbors are terrorists.

I base this assessment mostly on keen insights, sharp deductions and paranoid delusions, plus the fact that the American flag sticker on their car (an import!) is getting tattered.

This weekend, hundreds of volunteers will spread out across southern Maine to count loons. Based on anecdotal evidence, they’re likely to find a lot of them.

And not just at the State House.

I have a deep and inexplicable affection for anything that’s been taxidermed.

Birds showing off their gorgeous plumage.

Deer displaying their impressive racks.

Bears flashing their fierce dental work.

Expired legislators posed as if they were sleeping through a lengthy debate.

Before I begin this week’s in-depth analysis of the important issues of the seven days just past, let me confess to a stunning and shameful inadequacy.

I am not a hockey fan.

I pay so little attention to hockey that I get it mixed up with other ice-related sports, such as curling, figure skating, and ice road trucking. But I’m pretty sure hockey isn’t the one where you drill holes in frozen lakes, sit on ice blocks in little shacks and drink heavily until somebody catches a fish or freezes to death.

That’s lacrosse.

Replicas of Christopher Columbus’s ships arrived in Portland Harbor this week. The Nina, the Pinta, and the Edmund Fitzgerald offered an authentic glimpse into the past (according to the Sarah Palin Institute for Revisionist History) by sending a landing party ashore to claim Maine in the name of Spain. Or Italy. Or one of those debt-plagued places.

It now seems likely that Maine will soon have to declare war on the People’s Republic of China.

That’s not a course of action anyone in this state wanted, but it has been forced upon us by Beijing’s belligerence, intransigence, and by those commies saying nasty things about Millinocket.

They could have disparaged lobster. We’d have let it slide.

They could have insulted the moose. Like that beast, we have thick skins.

I don’t like boring street names. Particularly boring street names that are also misleading.

For years, I lived on Pine Street in Portland.

No pines.

Spruce Street in the same city.

No spruces.

I moved across town to Prospect Street, but it didn’t result in any noticeable improvement in my prospects.

I also lived on Park Avenue in the same city. While Deering Oaks was right across the street, there was no place for residents to park their cars during snow storms, so that name was only half-accurate.